


armada

by owlinaminor



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Rain, canonical stoner duck newton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 07:28:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19942438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: It is raining when Duck Newton first wields his sword.





	armada

**Author's Note:**

> so, it rained a lot in nyc yesterday. this less of a character study and more of a character sketch, really, but I like how it turned out, so here it is.

It is raining when Duck Newton first wields his sword.

The water pours down in waves, undulating across the forest floor. Back and forth, back and forth, enough force to sink the whole Spanish Armada, just push them under and cut their oxygen in a smooth blip beneath one peak and the next.

That’s the only thing Duck remembers from ninth-grade European history. The Spanish Armada. How they were pushed aside by the wind, their cannons waterlogged and their men frozen in place, carrying the British fleet to a lucky victory. Well, that and the way Mrs. Murphy’s pencil tapped on the front of her desk, impatient, as though measuring out all of their grades in Morse code before she’d even finished dictating the pop quiz.

Duck spent most of ninth-grade European history high.

He wishes he were high right now. Probably would be, if it weren’t for the rain—couldn’t get a lighter going, he barely passed tenth-grade chem but even he knows you need air, clean and dry, for a combustion reaction.

His boots drag in the wet brush, water trickling in through the space between jeans and socks, slowly rising like the marshes in spring. The leaves are soft, barely crunching beneath his feet. More like mulching. He tries to make a rhythm of it: _mulch, mulch,_ swing your arms back and forth, whistle a little, ignore the weight of the rain gathering on your hat and the wind at your back, just keep moving forward, man, you can make it—

_THWACK!_

There’s a tree branch. Right there. In front of his face, so close it cuts his vision in half—too easy to step into it, to let it swing back and bounce off the oak trunk behind and rebound into his arm. Duck reacts, the rain and the wind and the boots to heavy for his size nine feet all rearing up into one tsunami wave and—

_shhhhhhk!_

“Well done, Duck Newton. A worthy opponent I see, an unsuspecting red maple, well, I’m sure it would’ve killed you if you didn’t get to it first, what a brilliant conquest—”

_Shut up._

He sheathes the sword, much more slowly than he’d opened it. Careful, like clicking on the safety of a gun. Like clicking open your mechanical pencil for the pop quiz when you don’t know any of the answers but you think maybe, maybe if I stall long enough, something will come to me.

Duck stands, silent, in the forest. The rain beats down: streams into rivers, oceans, galaxies. Drown the maples, saturate the oaks. Give every sapling a good scare before summertime, that’ll teach ‘em to really build up their root bases.

Botany. Eleventh grade. Now there’s one Duck remembers, Ms. Robinia with her quiet hands, the way she sketched out alternation of generations on the chalkboard, labeled all the stages in green. Spores, gametophyte, gametes, zygote, sporophyte, and back again. Some trees can go on like this for decades, just circling, dropping seeds in the same place year after year and hoping something will take root.

Duck could take root here, a mile and a half down the white trail, a sword in his hand and water in his boots. He could drown here, still and cold, or he could fade into the oaks and the maples. Not enough dry air to even light a match.

Duck stands, silent and still as the trunks beside him, until the rain fades down to a drizzle. His stomach rumbles: he thinks of French onion soup.

“Duck Newton,” she will say later, her silhouette glittering in the moonlight. “How was your first hunt?”

“Not—not great, Minerva,” he’ll reply, gripping the rough tiles of the roof to avoid meeting her gaze. He’s smoked, and he’s had the soup, but something down inside there is still shivering. “I hunted one thing, and it was a tree, and it didn’t do nothin’. I just—you’ve got the wrong guy, okay? You messed up. I’m sorry.”

And she will watch him, as her connection fades—the way he stares out at the forest, one hand on the roof and one on his sword, as though ready to sow.

**Author's Note:**

> when I went into my office's kitchen to start transcribing this, smooth by santana ft rob thomas was playing, which only further solidifies my campaign for [minerva and duck to form a two-trombone jazz band](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor/status/1136033716843798528).


End file.
